Anybody Out There - Marian Keyes (12 page)

"Sir!" I said to the cabdriver, but we were moving also and already too far gone. It was too late
to turn and the traffic going back downtown was stuck solid. I lost my nerve: I'd never catch
him.
"Yeah?"
"Nothing."
I was trembling violently: the shock of seeing him. It didn't make sense for him to be on that bus
--he was going completely the wrong way, if he was going to work.
It couldn't have been him. It must have been someone who looked like him. Really like him. But
what if it was him? What if this had been my one chance to see him?
18
T    he security guards couldn't believe I was back. No employee of McArthur on the Park had
ever taken such a long time off work before--like never, not for holidays, not for "going to
Arizona" because most people who "went to Arizona" didn't come back to work. Weren't let
back.
"Hey, Morty, Irish Anna's back."
"She is? Irish Anna, we thought they'd sacked your ass. And whatcha do to your face?"
They delicately high-fived my bandaged right hand, and I joined the throngs of people streaming
to the banks of elevators. I squashed into the crammed metal box, everyone holding their coffee
and avoiding one another's eyes.
On the thirty-eighth floor, the elevator doors opened with a silent swish. I struggled to the front
and popped out like a pinball. The cream carpet was thick and soft, the very air smelled
expensive, and an unseen voice said, "Welcome back, Anna." I nearly jumped out of my skin. It
was Lauryn Pike, my manager, and she looked like she'd been standing there all night, waiting.
Tentatively she extended her hand, like she was thinking of touching me compassionately, then
thought better of it. I was glad. I didn't want anyone touching me, I didn't want to be comforted.
"You look great!" she said. "Really rested. Your hair has grown. So! Ready to go, yeah?"
I looked terrible, but if she acknowledged that, she might have to make allowances for me.
Right, about Lauryn. She was scrawny skinny, always cold, had very hairy arms and a nasty
brown cardigan, nearly as hairy as her arms, which she wore in the office, always dragging and
wrapping it about her undernourished body in an attempt to get warm. She burned with a manic
intensity and had very poppy eyes, like a Latter-day Saint. (Or maybe she just had an overactive

thyroid.) If I'd been a magazine beauty editor and I saw Lauryn coming to pitch me a Candy
Grrrl piece, I'd hide under my desk until she'd gone.
Despite that, Lauryn got loads of coverage. Likewise with men: regardless of her bulgy-eyed
boniness, and knobbly elbows and lumpy knees, she often got taken away for weekends to the
islands by lookers. Figure that one. (As we say around here.)
I can't understand it because it's not as if it's easy to find men in New York, even for the un-
poppy-eyed woman: it's comparable to ragged bands of women tramping wearily through a
smoking, destroyed, postapocalyptic cityscape, foraging for the smallest bits of usable stuff, like
the people in Mad Max had to do.
And it's not as if Lauryn was such a great person. Her job mattered to her far too much, and if
someone else succeeded, it was as if she'd failed. She threw an empty Snapple bottle at the wall
when Lanc�me's Superlash mascara got coverage in Lucky the same month it went head-to-head
with Candy Grrrl's Flutter-by.
All of a sudden I was gripped by terrible fear that I wouldn't be able to handle being back at
work, but I said, "I'm good to go, Lauryn."
"Good! Because we have, like, a lot happening right now."
"Just bring me up to speed."
"Sure. And you let me know, Anna, if you can't cope." She didn't mean this in a kind way. She
meant for me to let her know if she needed to sack me. "And when will that...thing...on your
face be better?" They hate physical imperfection round here. "And your arm? When will it be out
of the cast?"
Then she noticed my bandaged fingers. "What's that all about?"
"Missing nails."
"Jesus H," she said. "I'm gonna throw up."
She sat down and breathed deeply but didn't throw up. In order to throw up, it's necessary to
have something in your stomach and there was scant chance of that having happened.
"You gotta do something about them. Go see if you can get them fixed."
"Yes, but...okay."
A flash of silver caught my attention--it was Teenie! Wearing a silver boiler suit, tucked into
orange, vinyl knee boots. Today her hair was blue. To match her glittery blue lips. "Anna!" she
said. "You're back! Ooh, your hair is pretty. It's gotten so long." Together we discreetly sidled
away from Lauryn and Teenie said quietly, "Sweetie, how're you doing?"

"Okay."
"You are?" She quirked a blue, glittery eyebrow at me.
I slid a glance at Lauryn; she was far away enough not to hear. "Okay, maybe not exactly, but,
Teenie, the only way I'll get through this is if we pretend everything is the way it always was."
I couldn't have anyone's sympathy, sympathy meant that it had actually happened.
"Lunch?"
"Can't. Lauryn says I've got to get my nails fixed."
"What's up with them?"
"They're missing. But they're growing back as fast as they can."
"Eew."
"Yes, well," I said, going to my desk.
This was the longest I'd ever been away from my job and things felt familiar, yet very different.
The temp--or temps--had rearranged my stuff, and someone had put my photo of Aidan in a
drawer, which made me briefly but corrosively angry. I took it out and banged it down on the
spot it always stood on. And they said I was in denial?
"Oh my gosh, Anna, you're back!" It was Brooke Edison. Brooke was twenty-two and loaded
and lived with Mommy and Daddy in a triplex on the UES (Upper East Side). She took a car
service to work every single day--not the subway, not even a cab, but an air-conditioned Lincoln
Town Car with bottled water and a polite driver. Brooke didn't actually need to work, she was
just filling in time until someone put a massive rock on her finger and moved her to Connecticut
and bought her a station wagon and three perfect, highly gifted children.
She'd been hired as the Candy Grrrl junior, the person who did the heavy lifting, like stuffing
envelopes with samples for the magazines. But she was always having to leave work early or
come in late because she was attending charity benefits or having dinner with the chairman of the
Guggenheim, or getting a ride in David Hart's helicopter to the Hamptons.
She was sweet, obliging, and quite intelligent, and did everything perfectly. When she did it.
Which, like I say, wasn't that often. We picked up the slack a lot.
Ariella kept her on the staff because she knew everyone--people were always being her
godmother or her dad's best friend or her old piano teacher.
She did her private-girls'-school-in-Europe walk over to my desk, swinging her thick, glossy,
naturally beautiful hair, which glowed with privileged rich person's health. Her skin was

fantastic and she never wore makeup, which would have been a sacking offense for me and
Teenie, but not for her. Same with her clothes: Brooke wasn't even remotely kooky and no one
said a thing. Today she wore wide-cut pants in greige cashmere and a dinky little fawn sweater,
also in cashmere. I didn't think she knew that there were other fabrics and a rumor persisted that
she'd never bought anything from Zara in her life. She shopped at the three Bs--Bergdorf,
Barneys, and Bendel, the golden triangle--and get this: sometimes her dad bought her clothes.
He took his "baby girl" on weekend sprees and said, "Make your father happy, let me buy you
this vintage bag/embroidered Japanese coat/Gina sandals."
This is not conjecture, this is actual reportage of a real event, because one Saturday Franklin was
in Barneys spending money on his hot young (penniless) boy, Henk, in the hope that he wouldn't
leave him. Next thing Franklin spots Brooke and Old Man Edison (who is richer than God)
looking at Chlo� bags. At first Franklin thought the old guy was Brooke's boyfriend, and when
he heard the desk clerk say, "Hey there, Mr. Edison," he nearly puked. He said it was pedo stuff,
nearly like incest. I don't think he really meant it, Franklin is simply phenomenally mean-
spirited. He hates everyone, except Henk, and sometimes I think he hates him, too. (Henk is
Franklin's trophy wife--a skinny, sly-eyed boy, with jeans hanging indecently superlow,
displaying a narrow, sinewy abdomen. His hair is highlighted cream, silver, and honey and he
gets it cut in a mad, sticky-up do at Fr�d�ric Fekkai. He doesn't have a job, probably because his
hair care takes up so much of his time. Franklin bankrolls all of this primping, but occasionally
Henk stays away nights and goes downtown to play with his rentboy chums. I really like Henk,
he's very, very funny, but if he was my boyfriend, I'd be on sixteen Xanax a day.)
In addition to the nonstop cashmere, Brooke always wore at least five different items from
Tiffany. Mind you, everyone wore stuff from Tiffany. You had to. I think you'd be asked to leave
New York if you didn't.
She extended her hand (with short, neat, clear-glossed nails), didn't even flicker as she scanned
my scar, and said with genuine-sounding sincerity, "Anna, I am so sorry about what happened."
"Thank you."
Then she left; she didn't labor it--an awkward situation, handled just right. Brooke always got
everything just right. She was the most appropriate-aware person I had ever met. She also knew
exactly what to wear in every eventuality and it was already in her wardrobe. In triplicate. She
inhabited a world with strong rules and she had the money to obey them. I often wondered what
it must be like to be her.
Brooke had an Identi-Kit chum, Bonnie Bacall, who "worked" on Freddie & Frannie, another in-
house brand. They were BFFs (best friends forever) and both girls were actually very sweet, and
if sometimes they were hurtful or cruel, it wasn't because they meant to be. Not like Lauryn.
"Okay, people," Lauryn called. "Now that Anna has finished her conversations, could you all
possibly spare me a few moments of your time for a Candy Grrrl briefing." (Said sarcastically.)

A    ll day long, everyone was looking at me--but never directly. When I met girls from other
brands in the corridors or the washrooms, they gave me slanting, sidelong glances, and as soon
as I left I knew they were whispering about me. Like it was all my fault. Or contagious. I tried
defusing things by smiling at them, but then they looked away quickly, a little horrified.
Luckily, because this was New York, no one really gave a shite. For a short while I'd be an
object of curiosity, then they'd lose interest.
Midmorning, Franklin took me into Ariella's inner sanctum so I could thank her for keeping my
job open. One entire wall was filled with photos of her with famous people.
In her "trademark" powder-blue power suit, she acknowledged my gratitude by nodding slowly,
her eyes half closed. There was nothing more disconcerting than Ariella in her Capo di Tutti Capi
mode.
"Maybe sometime you can do something for me." Either she had a permanent sore throat or she
deliberately put on a hoarse Don Corleone�style mumble. "I need a favor, I can count on you?"
I work very hard for you, I wanted to say. Before all this happened, I got more coverage than any
of your other publicists and I intend that that will be the case again. You didn't pay me for one
second while I was away and it's not like I took off on a whim.
"Of course, Ariella."
"And get a haircut."
She nodded at Franklin in his immaculate suit: the signal to take me away.
Out in the hallway, Franklin circled a manicured thumb between his eyebrows, where his frown
lines would be, if they weren't being Botoxed into submission every six weeks. "Jesus, God," he
sighed. "Is it just me or does she seem a little...psychotic to you?"
"No more than usual. But I might not be the best judge right now."
He did his sympathetic face. "I know, baby cakes. So how ya doing?"
"Okay." There was no point in saying any more. He had zero interest in anyone else's problems.
But he was totally up-front about it, which meant I didn't mind. "How've you been? How's
Henk?"
"Bleeding me dry and breaking my heart. Got a joke for you. What's the difference between your
dick and your bonus?"
"Henk will blow your bonus?"

"Got it."
"You get a bonus?"
"Er..." He patted me on the shoulder and pulled the shutters down on his face. "You'll be okay,
kiddo."
I'd have to be.
Just because Franklin was hilariously funny and willing to talk about his personal life didn't
make him my friend. He was my boss. In fact, he was my boss's boss. (Lauryn reported to him.)
"And you heard Ariella. Get a haircut. Go see someone at Perry K."
Just what I needed: ridiculous high-maintenance hair when barely one of my hands was
operational.
At lunchtime I tried to get my nails done, but when I took off the bandages and revealed them to
the manicurist she went green and said they were far too short for acrylic ones to be fitted. When
I returned with the bad news Lauryn behaved as if I was lying.
"The girl told me to come back in a month," I protested weakly. "I'll get them done then."
"What-ev-er. Eye Eye Captain--I want your thoughts on the campaign by weekend."
When Lauryn said she wanted "my thoughts," she actually meant that she wanted a fully realized
campaign, complete with press releases, spreadsheets, budgeting, and a signed contract from
Scarlett Johansson saying she was so thrilled to be the new face of Candy Grrrl that she'd do it
for free.
"I'll see what I can do." I dashed to my desk and started speed-reading through the Eye Eye
Captain data.
It wasn't until late afternoon that I checked my e-mails. Unlike my home e-mail, my work stuff
had been opened and answered. I scrolled back through them, doing a crash course in catch-up. A
lot were from beauty editors asking for products which the greedy cows would probably never
give coverage to, or from people I'd been putting campaigns together with, or from George (Mr.
Candy Grrrl) with fool ideas of his own. Then my heart nearly jumped out of my mouth: this was
what I'd been waiting for. In bold black type--meaning it was new and unread--was an e-mail
from Aidan.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Tonight